Thing 7: Podcasts

I’ve been a keen user of Soundcloud for quite sometime now. Although I must confess it has been more of a feature in my personal life as oppose to my working day. I love music and particularly listening to new and upcoming bands. So I’m a huge fan of Soundcloud in terms of what it has done for grassroots musicians and bands over the years. I’m one of those annoying people that likes try and discover a new band or musician before they become famous and then brag to my friends that I’ve been listening to them for months by the time they get played on the radio! So over the years Soundcloud has served me well in that respect.

I have to confess I rarely listen to podcasts. The only podcasts that I’ve really got into in the past was the Melvyn Bragg ‘In Our Time’ series, which as a history buff I thought were absolutely fantastic. But even with these I would often find my concentration begins to break after 20 or so minutes and my mind begins to wander. I confess I wasn’t aware of library podcasts like ‘Circulating Ideas’ but I listened to a few episodes and I found it very interesting. I think it would be great if there was something similar in the UK.

In terms of my own day to day working perspective I can’t really think of a particular use for podcasts in the same way as I could for say Google Hangouts but having some experience of working in public libraries and museums I can see how they could be used effectively to record literary events and oral history projects.